Viewpoint
Christianophobia: The Lesson of Terry Jones
by Tim Padgett, Friday, September 10, 2011
Pastor Terry Jones, right, of the Dove World Outreach Center speaks to the media in Gainesville, Fla., as Imam Muhammad Musri of the Islamic Society of Central Florida looks on. Phil Sandlin / AP
Even ogres can serve a purpose. The “Reverend” Terry Jones has at least shown us the ugly consequences of the Islamophobia that was this summer's political fad — by turning the tables. How does it feel to be caricatured as a nation of Koran-burning radicals? Americans were appalled to find that a solitary religious bigot and his tiny congregation of 50 pseudo Christians had hijacked our global image. We squirmed as a warped little corner of America's Judeo-Christian culture colored the entire country in the eyes of the world — the way Americans let a warped little corner of Islamic culture color all Muslims, even Muslim Americans.
Tip of the Hat to Rob Sentse at LinkedIn.
Phi Beta Iota: There are no coincidences within totalitarian corporate-controlled governments. The combination of the Christian dupe calling for the burning of the Qu'an and the manufactured theater of the Muslim mosque with CIA funding at Ground Zero are all too reminiscent of the FBI-sponsored car bombing of the World Trade Center in the 1990's, and totally consistent with what Buckminster Fuller called “White House Theater” and Noam Chomsky calls “manufacturing consent.” In light of this shallow and manipulative TIME story, the five “filters” that Chomsky and his co-author identified bear reiteration:
From Wikipedia “Propaganda Model:”
First presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, the “Propaganda model” views the private media as businesses interested in the sale of a product — readers and audiences — to other businesses (advertisers) rather than that of quality news to the public. Describing the media's “societal purpose”, Chomsky writes, “… the study of institutions and how they function must be scrupulously ignored, apart from fringe elements or a relatively obscure scholarly literature”.[1] The theory postulates five general classes of “filters” that determine the type of news that is presented in news media. These five classes are:
Today anti-communism (which was nurtured in part by the CIA's importation of 100+ senior Nazis each year after the end of WWII) has been replaced by the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) and its occasional theatrics such as the “Underpants Bomber.” The tragedy is that 80% of the US public has been so dumbed down and anesthitized as to take this garbage seriously, while the 20% that “get it” are marginalized, which is of course the point of it all.
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